Pandora - End of mobility at the Ubele Initiative by Ceyda Ozkan

Hi!

I have been living in London since 13th of May and working at The Ubele Initiative. I came from Turkey (from Ankara) for a project which is called `Pandora: Discovering European Opportunities for Female Entrepreneurship`. I am a social worker and when I was living in Ankara I had been working with Yenimahalle Municipality which is a partner of Pandora project. According to the project timeline, from March to May there is a staff mobility from Turkey to London. And now I am working at The Ubele Initiative for this. I'm lucky because I have found excellent friendships in The Ubele's office, thank you for that. I really had two wonderful months with Ubele.

We visited some community hubs that work for community development; some of them depend on council, some of them are independent. I learnt how the social support system in London works and what are the roles of councils to solve the some problems. Thus I can compare the Turkey`s system and UK`s system. And we (Yenimahalle Municipality) can improve the new systems in Turkey to solve the social problems.

I did interviews with women who are entrepreneurs. They told me their business life stories. We talked about women entrepreneurship and difficulties in UK. They suggested some ideas to women who want to start business life. At the end all of them said that: `If you are a woman the life is harder for you, because you are responsible your home, children and you job!`

The Ubele`s office is located in a big horticultural centre, it is a good chance for me because I love to gardening. I sow flowers seeds, I hope they will look good and colourful in the summer :)

Thank you for this chance to my friends; Merve, Zeren, Yvonne, Aisha, Miguel, Tracy and others. It is a good experience for me. I will go back to Turkey with amazing memories :)